Enjoy Some Stories around Sue Harrison's Fire Circle



Back in the 1990s I read a series of books about prehistoric Alaska. The first story in the Ivory Carver Trilogy was Mother Earth Father Sky. I'm sure I partly picked it up because of that great title, but I was soon captivated by the story and the characters. Fast forward a decade and I get to know a Sue Harrison on Facebook who has read some of my books. It takes me a little while, but it finally dawns on me that I am corresponding with an author I greatly admire and I'm going "Wow! The Sue Harrison is telling me she likes my story." See, writers can have fan moments too. Her books were on my keeper shelves. 

So I checked out Sue's website and loved what I saw there too. Gorgeous photos of sunsets taken by her husband, Neil Harrison. I promise you’re in for a treat if you go to Sue’s website and check out the MySky photos. 

Sue’s Alaskan Ivory Carver trilogy and Storyteller Trilogy books were recently released as e-books (Sue's Amazon page). So if you missed them in print back in the '90s, you can load up your e-readers with some great stories that were international bestsellers in the general market. I will warn my readers who prefer the gentler Christian fiction, that these stories accurately depict the harsher lifestyle of that prehistoric age. But now come join Sue's fire circle and let her tell you about her books and why she could write about the outdoor of the Alaskan tribes in a way that had the reader smelling the smoke of the campfires and feeling the icy winter winds. Leave a comment on the post and you'll be entered in a drawing for an e-book copy of Mother Earth Father Sky. The winner will be picked June 9.

First tell us about Mother Earth Father Sky in your own words, Sue.

When all you love is torn away, and there is nothing left, your first decision must be whether you can bear to live. My novel MOTHER EARTH FATHER SKY is that oft-told story presented through the eyes, heart, and mind of Chagak, a woman – scarcely more than a girl – who decides to survive, although everyone she loves and everything she knows is torn from her life.

This theme of complete loss is a frequent motif in stories, books, and legends. What sets Chagak’s story apart from others is its setting. Chagak lives 9,000 years ago in the archipelago now called the Aleutian Islands, a chain that forms the boundary between the waters of the North Pacific and the Bering Sea .

How did you come up with the idea for the book?

Dr. William Laughlin’s book, ALEUTS: SURVIVORS OF THE BERING LAND BRIDGE, provided the time frame and setting for my novel. In this book, Laughlin, an archeologist, chronicles his uncovering of one of the oldest known villages (circa 6,700 B.C.) in North America .

As I read his book, the Aleut People captured my heart and my imagination. They settled on remote and barren islands where they established a unique and successful culture that remained constant and continuous into historic times. They were (and are) inventors, artists, and skilled hunters. The structural framing of their sea kayaks, which had bifurcated bows, has never been surpassed in usefulness, even by modern engineers. Their medical expertise, when they were “discovered” by the Russians in the 1740s, was greater than the medical knowledge and techniques of 18^th century Europeans.

MOTHER EARTH FATHER SKY is my attempt to give a dimensional reality, within the minds of my readers, to prehistoric events and customs, the knowledge of which has been passed down to our present age only through remains excavated by archaeologists and interpreted by anthropologists. These facts, fleshed out through the legends, beliefs, stories, dances, and songs of the Aleut People tell us that several hundred years after the people first came to the far reaches of the Aleutian Islands, they suddenly abandoned their shore-side villages and began anew with better vantage points in more easily defensible sites. The first question, of course, is “why?” And thus, the idea for MOTHER EARTH FATHER SKY came about, and a story began to grow in my mind and heart.

I began the research for the novel in 1978, and by 1981, with 400 hand-written pages of notes, I started to compose the first draft. By 1984, I had completed a very rough 1,000-page manuscript. During the next five years, I received 17 rejections from agents, along with some very good ideas for revision. Finally in 1989, literary agent Rhoda Weyr agreed to represent me and a few months later sold MOTHER EARTH FATHER SKY in a 3-day auction to Doubleday.

(I'm interrupting here to say auctions are very good for authors, but something most authors  never have to worry about! And I love this next part of Sue's story.)

My husband Neil and I were sitting at our kitchen table when I received the first phone call from Doubleday. As I spoke with the editor, I realized that my husband had tears streaming down his face as he realized that MOTHER EARTH FATHER SKY was actually going to sell. We’d both nearly given up.

Now tell us how you could write about the outdoor life so convincingly.

When I was a child, my parents often took my brother and me camping. It was during those trips that our father taught us how to “walk softly upon the earth.” He literally taught us how to place our feet on the animal trails so that we didn’t snap twigs or rustle leaves (toe first walking) and how to watch where we walked. He taught us how to find edible mushrooms, how to fish from shore and from a boat, and how to cook over an open campfire. He taught us that a matchbook match set into hot oil in a pan will flame up at just the right temperature to cook your fish. We leaned “tent living” - wisdom in small things like zippering zippers all the way so mosquitoes don’t get it and how NOT to touch the roof or sides of the tent when it’s raining because where you touch will start a leak. And of course that sounded so silly that I had to try it for myself, and suffered the leak over my face the rest of the night. I’m not a cold weather camper, but I do remember one camping trip in Maine when we awoke to a silent and beautiful world coated with snow, and I remember the laughter of my parents as we left the tent and entered that enchanted world. We ate mostly game animals when I was growing up, venison, bear, partridge, geese, ducks, moose, elk when we could get it, and fresh water fish. We once tried to eat a muskrat. It smelled terrible. My dad tried a bite, but the rest of us passed. My mother was so disgusted with him. No more muskrats in her kitchen!

From my husband I learned how to build a fire, how to gut and butcher a deer, how to fire a rifle (not my favorite thing), how to use a bow, how to pitch a tent, ice fishing, how to dress for winter survival, how to mark a trail, how to climb a tree, how to read animal tracks, how to paddle a canoe. To survive where we live, we’ve both learned “animal etiquette”. If you meet a bear be still and speak softly. If they attack, play dead. If you meet a deer be still and sing. They’ll stand there for quite a while to listen. If you meet a cougar (mountain lion) make yourself as large and scary as possible. Act aggressive, grab a fallen branch if you can easily find one and wave it around and roar. Don’t run unless they run at you first. Fight for all you’re worth. Don’t brush up against a porcupine. Wolves usually circle out ahead of you to attack and usually don’t attack unless they are in a group. Get inside something (a vehicle) or climb a tree. Yell fiercely at coyotes if they’re approaching your territory. If you inadvertently get too close to a skunk, close your eyes tightly if they spray. Weasels are mean. If I see a non-poisonous snake and would like a little help against insects in my garden, I’ll catch it and carry it back to my house and let it go there. It probably won’t stay but you never know.

From friends and books, I learned how to kayak. One of my great joys was an opportunity to paddle a Native kayak in Alaska. Very tippy!  I learned to harvest many natural wild foods and also harvest wild plants for dyes and medicines.  

So now we know why Sue could walk with her characters through those wild lands in such a way that we, the readers who have never done all that camping could walk with them in our imaginatons too. Thanks Sue, for coming over for a visit here on One Writer's Journal.

Hope the rest of you enjoyed getting to know about Sue and her books as much as I did. You can find out lots more on her website. If you'll leave a comment for Sue or for me on my blog before next Sunday, you'll have a chance to win an e-book copy of Mother Earth, Father Sky. Remember that if you don't have a Kindle, Nook or other e-reader, you can download an e-reader application to your computer or iPhone.

Thanks for reading and more giveaways are going to be coming your way as I'm hoping to send out my newsletter with a Celebration Giveaway for Small Town Girl next week. If you don't get my newsletter and would like to, you can sign up here. Ann's Newsletter. Only a few weeks until my new Rosey Corner book will be available. I'm excited! And excited about Sue visiting here today. Always great to peek behind the scenes of books you love.

Let's Talk Titles - Titling Time Again

Only weeks away from the release of Small Town Girl, my second Rosey Corner book. It follows up the characters in Angel Sister five years later. And now it's time to title the Rosey Corner book I'm writing now. My working title has been Home to Rosey Corner. I like it but I haven't had any illusions about that title sticking. I've again moved my characters four years into their future. Each of these books will be stories that can stand alone, but it will be more fun if you read them all - especially for me!! :)

The third Rosey Corner book won't be released until the summer of 2014. A long time from now, but that's the way the book business is. You're always working on the book ahead. I feel blessed to have a book ahead to be working on, to be considering a new title for. So let's talk titles.

I'm the kind of writer who would rather wait until I've written the end to the story before I decide on a title. For many years, that's the way I worked when I was writing without contracts. I'd write the book and then try to place the completed manuscript with a publisher. That made coming up with titles easier for me, but it is great these days having the promise of publication in hand while I'm writing the book. That is, if I can deliver a story the editors like. I'm hoping I can do that yet again with my Rosey Corner characters. 

Many of the titles of my young adult books are the ones I came up with or slightly tweaked versions of my titles. Secrets to Tell, Bridge to Courage, A Chance Hero, For Sheila, Wish Come True - to name some of them. That's been true for some of my Christian fiction books too. Scent of Lilacs was my title. So was Orchard of Hope. Summer of Joy was not. I had suggested Sunflowers of Joy, but Summer of Joy is better. And now they are being advertised as the Heart of Hollyhill series. I like that too. 

The Outsider was not my title, but once it was suggested by the publishers, I liked it. It fit the story nicely and suggested titles for my other Shaker books. The Believer, The Seeker, The Blessed, and The Gifted were all titles I suggested, following the pattern of The Outsider to tie the book titles together. You can see the tie-in on the Hollyhill books too. 

If you pay attention, you'll notice that kind of kinship in titles on most series books. Of course, the writer with a great tie-in with titles is the mystery writer, Sue Grafton, starting with her A is for Alibi. She very successfully is working her way through the alphabet and is up to W is for Wasted that releases in September this year. I used to read Ross MacDonald mysteries and often his books had a color in the titles.  
 
The Rosey Corner books don't have quite as obvious relationship titles, but they do have the echo of small town and family. The new title proposed is Love Comes Home. To my ear, that has the same feel as my working title, Home to Rosey Corner. What do you think?

So we'll see. My editor once told me I wrote to the title. I certainly did in The Seeker, The Blessed, and The Gifted. Those themes were threads throughout the stories. Maybe I will again with this book. Love's a good theme to have in a story and home is a place we all want to go. 

What words do you like to see in titles? Do some words encourage you to pick up a book quicker than other words? What is the best title for a book that you've ever seen?   

Remember to drop back by on Sunday or Monday when I'll be visiting with Sue Harrison, author of the Alaskan novel series beginning with Mother Earth Father Sky. Here's what Publishers Weekly said about the third book in the series, Brother Wind. "Engrossing, dramatic adventure...an emotionally compelling conclusion to a monumental saga." I think you'll enjoy visiting with Sue and hearing how she came to write these bestselling books.